Hello from Springfield, MO

Hello from Springfield, MO

Friday Evening,  May 30, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

I am staying at the Candlewood Suites (map).  I have two activities that brought me here from Prescott, IA.  The first is to attend an amazing Antique Truck Historical Society (link) annual convention/show.  The second activity was to meet with a person that I am doing some joint work with. 

Let’s step back and catch up with the rest of the trip so far.  We left Denver on Saturday 5/24 after attending our granddaughter’s graduation party.  We left from the Thornton area about 4:00 Pm and drove until it started to get dark.  We parked the bus in a great rest stop in Julesburg, CO.  The next day we drove a bit over 400 miles and arrived in Prescott, IA in the late afternoon.  Our bus is parked in its “reserved” spot at the Birt house.  We spent Memorial Day decorating graves and attending a special luncheon at the local church. 

Thursday morning I drove the PT Cruiser to Springfield, MO (about 6 hour drive).  I will return to Prescott tomorrow.  The ATHS show (their national convention) is amazing.  There are hundreds of trucks.  The photo below is not the best, but it shows a long shot of some of the trucks.  There are all shapes and sizes and years.  I would guess that about half of the trucks are semis.  I have been there for a few hours Thursday and Friday and will go back for a couple of hours tomorrow morning before I start back.

This is my third ATHS national convention.  I have been a member for many years. The national conventions are almost beyond description.  The owners are very friendly and love to show their trucks.  As I said, the variety is amazing.  Each time I make a lap around the huge fairground, I see something new and interesting.

That is all for now.

Hello from the Sacramento

Hello from the Sacramento

Thursday  afternoon,  May 1, 2014   (One post travelogue)

I am in Sacramento doing a couple of training sessions for NTT.  This week it is two days of Mechanical Drives and two days of Vibration Analysis.  Mechanical Drives is old hat for me, but Vibration analysis is a new class for NTT.  To put it nicely, the course was not well developed before it was released.  The class is based on a text book, but the slides were very primitive.  I have spent MANY hours developing new slides that present the data in a better format.  Luckily, I am co-teaching with a person who has a great deal of experience in the latest technology. 

My part of the vibration class was to set the stage for advanced discussion by the other instructor.  I did the first three chapters and discussed how we used to do vibration analysis on belt drives with very basic tools.  Indeed, most of my work was in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s.  To put that in perspective, personal computers did not become available to the public until the mid to late ‘70s!! The computer based “tools” today are amazing!

This is a “regional” class.  What that means is that the students come from different companies and the classes are held in a hotel.  That kind of class is quite different from what we call onsight classes where we go into a plant and do a class specifically for a business.  Boeing would be an example of the latter.  In my first NTT employment (2000-2002) most of the classes were public at hotels.  Today most are onsight.  I much prefer the public class atmosphere.  There is always a broad base of experience and the students seem to be willing to exchange examples that reinforce what we are teaching. 

The other nice feature of public classes is that they are held at normal hours {grin}.  At Boeing, we teach on either first shift (6:00-2:30) or second shift (2:30-11:00).  A week of that kind of schedule will really mess up your internal clock!

I am staying at the Hampden Inn in Sacramento (map).  The class is being held at the same location.  When I searched out the location on Google Maps, I noticed that they had changed the map format significantly.  It will be interesting to see how the above link displays.

Surprisingly, I am actually posting this blog before I leave town (at airport).

That is all for this blog.

Hello from the Seattle Airport

Hello from the Seattle Airport

Drafted:  Friday Afternoon,  April 11, 2014   (first post of this trip – and only one {grin})

Posted:  Monday  April 14, 2014 from home.

I often mention that this blog is really a travelogue.  I only post when there is travel related stuff to talk about.  The readers that we have certainly do not want to read about a lot of minutia taking place in our lives {big grin}.

I have been in the Seattle area since last Sunday.  I taught Shaft Alignment and Mechanical Drives courses this week on the early shift (6:00 AM – 2:30) at Boeing.  Normally these are my fun classes to teach, but I had 3 out of 5 of the students who kicked back, put their feet on the table and went to sleep!  No attempt to hide the fact that they were sleeping.  I finally got a Boeing person to read the riot act to them.  Since they are technically our customer, I did not feel like I should really come down on them, but I gave them plenty of comments to let them know I was not a happy camper.  In all my years of teaching and presenting seminars (over 45 years) I have never had that many really rude students.  The two that did not sleep apologized to me about the terrible behavior of the other students.  I know that it really affected my attitude.  I tried my best to give them a good session, but I could tell that I was not at my peak.

If you follow my blog, you will recall that the last few months of 2013, I was in the Seattle area a large percentage of the time.  Then the spigot turned off.  Boeing made some demands of NTT for course revision and that resulted in no classes being presented for the first three months.  In addition the other instructor, who was also an interim manager of the group, returned to an instructor only position and has priority over the schedule.  Where that leaves me is anybody's guess. 

I really got tired of all the travel last year, but I would like to do a class a month or so.  Like so many things, it seems to be feast or famine.

As usual, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Kent.  Unfortunately they are converting to a Ramada property next week.  I detest Ramada Inns!.  The location of the hotel is ideal for our classes, but I will find another Holiday Inn that will work.

During the hiatus,   I started a major shop project – the rebuild of my '59 BC-150 International truck.  I am having a ball working in the shop!!! I have been averaging maybe 25-30 hours a week – not bad for an old fart {grin}.  I have been trying to document the project at:  http://beltguy.com/bc150/bc150.htm  I am having some problems with the website.  It works but some of the thumbnail pictures do not display.  The thumbnails that don’t display will produce the larger version.  The software I am using (MS Frontpage) is no longer supported by GoDaddy and that causes all kinds of problems.  I will begin converting to WordPress format in the near future,  In the meantime, you can get a feeling of the size of the project.

While our blog has been rather sparse the past few months, our travel plans suggest that we will be on the road a bit more over the next few months.  Stay tuned.

Per my usual track record, I did not finish this post in the airport – thus the delay in posting.

That is all for this trip.

Hello from Evergreen – Catching Up

Hello from Evergreen – Catching Up

Sunday Evening ,  February 2, 2014   

Wow, I can’t believe that my last post was November 19, 2013.  Several of our friends have called to ask if we are OK.  Part of the problem is that we still have not sent out our Christmas Letter!

I started a blog on December 13, but never completed or posted it.  Here is what I had written:

Yes, I am back in Kent.  Indeed, I was also here last week as well.  Last week, I taught for three days and flew home Wednesday night.  Actually, I got to the house at 1:15 AM Thursday and the temperature was – 21 degrees!!!

Sunday I flew back out and have been teaching a 5 day class.  The class is on the second shift and I think I like that better than the first shift where I have to get up at 4:00 AM

The weather here continues to be cold (some frost in the morning) and we have had some heavy rain a few days.  As I have noted before, the air is very moist and with a bit of wind, the cold seems much worse than the thermometer would suggest.

I really don’t know where to start catching up.  Both Pat and I were pretty darn sick for all of December and a couple of weeks before and after.  Mine started out as Whooping Cough and went into pneumonia and Pat’s started out as a sinus infection and then pneumonia.  Neither of us remember being that sick for that long.  When I was teaching the two classes in December, I kept getting sicker and by the time I got home I was down and out.  We could barely make it from the bedroom to the living room.  Fortunately we are both doing much better now.

We have had some fun animal photo opportunities the past few months:

 

Elk in the back yard Nov. 24 2013

Fox on the back deck Dec. 24 2013

Elk in the front yard Jan. 13 2014

My teaching schedule has changed significantly.  I was scheduled to do two classes in both Jan. and Feb., but Boeing has halted all training until NTT revises some of the classes.  I am tentatively scheduled for a class in April.  March schedule is unknown.  All thing considered, the change in schedule has not been all bad.  The 2013 schedule was way too hectic.  While the money is good, the travel is a pain in the tail.

During this hiatus, I have started rebuilding my ’59 IHC truck.  I have really enjoyed getting back in the shop doing somewhat creative fabrication.  I also enjoy doing all the “parts research”.  I updated the project page (click here) .  The rebuild will be extensive.  The engine will be updated to a large V8 IH engine, a 5 speed truck transmission, a Brownie 4 speed auxiliary gear box, a 36 inch frame stretch and a period-correct sleeper.  This is a typical Shepherd project {grin}.

Probably lots more that I could add to this blog, but at least you all know that we are alive and doing pretty well.